Looking for a My Music Staff or Opus1 alternative?
An honest comparison

My Music Staff and Opus1 are both established tools. My Music Staff has been around a long time and is especially popular with independent teachers. Opus1 is built for music schools. If the one you have is working for you, you may not need anything else.

Studio owners usually start looking for an alternative when something has changed. The studio has grown from one teacher to four. Families expect to book online the way they book a haircut. The front desk is juggling more than the old setup was built for. If that sounds familiar, this guide is meant to help you decide, not to talk you into anything.

A note on fairness: we built BookMyLesson, so we're not neutral. We only describe what BookMyLesson does. Software changes, so check My Music Staff's and Opus1's own sites for their current features and plans.

What BookMyLesson is built around

BookMyLesson starts at the moment a family says yes. You build your own booking app with your logo, brand color, instruments, teachers, lessons and prices, then put it on your website or share its link. A new student books, lands on your calendar, gets reminded and gets billed without you typing anything in.

Everything else hangs off that booking: one calendar for every teacher, your student list, payments and the emails families get. If you want the full tour, our online booking guide walks through setup step by step.

Built for studios with several teachers

BookMyLesson works for a solo teacher, but it's designed for a studio with a team:

• One calendar with every instructor, and a Day view with a column per teacher.
• Rooms, so two teachers are never booked into the same room at once.
• Instructor logins that see their own students, and Front Desk logins that run the day.
• Two-way Google Calendar sync for each instructor, with BookMyLesson as the source of truth.
• An Instructor Pay ledger that tracks what you owe each teacher. It tracks; it never moves money.

The Basic plan covers up to 5 instructors and 200 recurring students. Premium has no limit on either. There's more on this in how to schedule several teachers without double bookings.

Billing the way music schools actually bill

Every lesson offer is Monthly Tuition, a Lesson Package or a Single Lesson, and each can be billed automatically or by hand.

• Monthly Tuition is billed 7 days ahead and due on the 1st.
• Automatic Invoicing is included on every plan.
• On Premium, families can turn on AutoPay, or Auto-Renewal for packages, when they book.
• Families who pay cash, check or Venmo? Mark it paid in one click.

Card payments go straight to your own Stripe account. BookMyLesson never takes a cut of your lessons.

What families get

• Booking in a few taps, with no account to create and no app to download.
• Confirmation and reminder emails with your logo and your sign-off.
• Manage My Lessons, where they sign in with a six-digit code to see their lessons, pay, and reschedule or cancel inside your rules.

What switching actually involves

Here's the honest version.

1. Students. Export your student list as a CSV file and drop it into Import Students. BookMyLesson recognizes a My Music Staff export and Opus1's student file layout, and maps the student, parent contact, instrument, teacher and notes for you. Nothing goes on the calendar and nobody gets an email.
2. Schedules. If your lessons are in Google Calendar, the calendar's Import brings them in and matches them to the same students. Otherwise, book each weekly student's lesson once and make it recurring.
3. Booking app. Build it in the Booking App Builder and publish it.
4. Cards on file. This is the one that takes patience. Saved cards don't move over, so families enter a card once, at their next payment.

Most studios move in an afternoon. Plan a little longer if a lot of your families pay automatically.

You can also try it on your real studio before you tell a single family. The trial has every Premium feature and needs no card, so import your students, bring in your Google Calendar, build the booking app and book yourself a lesson. If it doesn't feel easier than what you have, you've lost an afternoon, not a season.

Questions to ask any studio software

Whatever you choose, these questions sort the options out fast:

• Can a family book a real open time on my website without calling me?
• Does it hold a weekly student's spot, so nobody else books it?
• Will each teacher's Google Calendar stay in sync without creating duplicates?
• Can teachers have their own logins without seeing everything?
• Who holds the card payments, and does the software take a percentage?
• Can I try it with my real schedule before I pay?

For BookMyLesson, the answers are on our features page and pricing. Basic is $49 a month, Premium is $99 a month, and every studio starts with a 14-day Premium trial with no credit card.